2000

2002

2005

Rule of law, Transparency and Corruption

Full datasets for each sub-sub-category are linked to in the text below
and at the foot of this page.

Governments and governance cannot exist or function without the political good called Rule of Law. Such a designation refers not necessarily to the Anglo-Saxon common law, the Napoleonic Code, Islamic jurisprudential methods, or others, but rather to a codified, transparent method of adjudicating personal disputes of all kinds, formal and informal contractual obligations, and disputes between citizens and the nation-state, without resort to violence. Thus, nation-states with enforceable codes of law, nation-states that have adhered to international conventions and legal obligations, and nation-states with judicial mechanisms free of state control have stronger rule of law regimes and supply larger amounts of the political good of Rule of Law.

This political good has three main components, all weighted equally in this Index of African Governance: Ratification of Critical Legal Norms; Judicial Independence and Efficiency; and Corruption. Although this Index prefers empirical, objective, data on which to base its ratings of each of the three components, we are compelled this year to rely for some of our data on perceptually derived numbers.

As the term “rule of law” is used here it highlights “the idea of laws enacted—laid down, legislated—by an authoritative body.” The term is sometimes used also or instead to highlight human rights and democracy, the idea of “a higher notion of Law as binding because it is sound in principle."¹ This broader second approach is addressed in the Index of African Governance under the category of “Participation and Human Rights.”

Ratification of Critical Legal Norms

1. Ratification of core international human rights conventions. There are seven core conventions currently in force as identified by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). This SSC measures ratification of each, giving a value of 0 to 7 for each country in each year. The purpose of this SSC is to measure whether a country’s legal norms with respect to the core area, human rights, are clearly stated and consistent with international law. Clearly, ratification of human rights treaties may have little to do with respect for human rights in practice. In this sense, this SSC addresses inputs (formal institutions) more than outputs (respect in practice). The Index of African Governance, however, assesses respect for human rights in practice through a number of SSCs, in particular those listed under the “Participation and Human Rights” category.

2. The presence of international sanctions for human rights violations, based on information for each year from the records of the UN Security Council. This SSC is intended to measure, at a very basic level, whether the country is in gross violation of international law.

3. Laws on contracts and property rights are other important areas for which clear legal norms are key. Because no acceptable measure yet exists for these important aspects of legal norms, the Index this year uses as a proxy the “Property Rights Index” developed as one of the ten sub-components of the Index of Economic Freedom, produced by the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal. The Property Rights Index rates the degree to which a country’s laws protect and enforce private property rights.² It is based on coding by the authors of the Index of Economic Freedom, with values (in increments of ten) from 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

Existence of Independent and Efficient Judicial Systems

1. Judicial independence, based on the “rule of law” sub-score from the civil liberties index of Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2006 (corresponds to 2005). This is a composite measure that assesses the independence of the judiciary, civilian control of police, protection from political terror, and equal treatment across various groups. It is based on detailed expert surveys, with low values suggesting poor rule of law and high values better rule of law. Sub-scores are not available from Freedom House for years before 2005. The notes for this SSC discuss estimation for earlier years.

2. Efficiency of the courts, based on numbers of pre-trial detainees as a percentage of all detainees, from the World Prison Brief produced by the International Centre for Prison Studies. The best available data are for various years, 1999-2006. The year for each country’s estimate is given in the notes for this SSC.

3. Efficiency of national institutions regarding contract enforcement, from World Bank, Doing Business 2005. Based on expert surveys and analyses (that differ across years and are thus not fully comparable over time), Doing Business measures the efficiency (in days) of “contract enforcement following the evolution of a sale of goods dispute and tracking the time involved from the moment the plaintiff files the lawsuit until actual payment.”

Corruption

1. Public sector corruption from the annual “Corruption Perceptions Index” of Transparency International. This is a composite index based on twelve polls from nine institutions. For the 2006 CPI, for instance, these include the Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) by the World Bank (2006); Economist Intelligence Unit (2006), Freedom House Nations in Transit (2006), The International Institute for Management Development, Lausanne (2005, 2006); Grey Area Dynamics Ratings by the Merchant International Group (2006); the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, Hong Kong (2005, 2006), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, African Governance Report (2005); the World Economic Forum (2005, 2006); and the World Markets Research Centre (2006). At least three sources are required for a country to be scored. Scores range from 0 (high levels of perceived corruption) to 10 (low levels of perceived corruption). Although the CPI is the gold standard thus far for measuring nation-state corruption, the CPI is based on perceptions obtained by expert assessment and other survey means. Not all African countries have been examined fully by this TI method. Thus, in order to give scores for all countries, we also include some CPI estimates based on very limited data. For additional information, see the detailed notes on this SSC.

Notes and datasets for sub-sub-categories in Rule of Law

¹ George P. Fletcher, Basic Concepts of Legal Thought (New York, 1996), 11-12. The term corresponds roughly to the distinction between “law” and “rights,” although these terms are not used to capture this distinction in English in the same way they are in other languages (e.g., in French, loi versus droit, or in Spanish, ley versus derecho).

² For more information on methodology, see the detailed notes on this SSC.